Sermons on the Song of Songs

concerning the bad pastors of the church, also how the blessed in heaven, and the angels, come to the aid of the elect, who are still pilgrims upon the earth.

WE are ready for a new departure. I described in the sermon of yesterday the leaders whom we should desire to have while we journey through this world, but I did not describe those whom we, in fact, have. And we find these latter to be wholly unlike the former. Not all of those whom you see at the present day surrounding the Bride on all sides, and who appear to take up the post at her right hand (to use a common phrase) as their own,- are the friends of the Bridegroom. Very few indeed are there among them who do not seek their own interests. They have a love for gifts, but they have not an equal love for Christ, because they have joined hands with mammon. See how they go about adorned and trim, clad in many and bright colours, like unto a bride coming out of her chamber. If you suddenly beheld such a person coming from afar, would you not take it to be the Bride herself rather than one of her guardians? From whence, do you suppose, comes this great

abundance of all things to them, this magnificence in dress, this luxury at their tables, these masses of gold and silver vases, but from the property of the Bride? Thence it is that [the Church] is left poor and naked and in want, uncared for, wasted, pale and bloodless with famine. Assuredly this is not to adorn the Bride, but to despoil her; not to take care of her, but to destroy; not to defend her, but to expose her to danger; not to train her in good, but to abandon her to evil (instituere, prostituere) \ it is not to feed the flock, but to slaughter and devour it, and to such the Lord says: Who eat up My people as they eat bread (Ps. xiv. 4, and liii. 4); and in another Psalm: They have devoured Jacobs and laid waste his dwelling-place (lxxix. 7); and in a prophet: They eat up the sin of My people (Hosea iv. 8), as if He said: ' They exact the price of sins for their own profit, but for the sinners they do not take the care which is due.' Whom will you find among those who are set over the government of the Church who is not far more intent upon emptying the purses of those under his authority than of rooting up their sins? Or where will you find one who by his prayers turns away the Divine anger, and proclaims the acceptable year of the Lord? But let us speak of lighter evils: a heavier judgment awaits graver offences.

2. But yet it is in vain that we even remonstrate with them, for they do not listen to us. And if what I say is set down in writing, they disdain to read it; or, if they happen to read it, they inveigh against me, although they would with much more justice inveigh against themselves. Let us, then, leave those people, who are not finders of the Bride, but sellers, and let us rather inquire who are those by whom the Bride is found, as she herself states. Those of the present day, though they have indeed inherited the ministry in their place, have not inherited their zeal. All desire to be successors [of the Apostles], few to be imitators of them. Would that they were as watchful in the discharge of the functions of their offices as they are eager in soliciting some dignified appointment. Then they would carefully and watchfully keep her [the Church] who was found by them and entrusted to their charge; or rather they would be watchful for their own sakes, nor suffer it to be said of them: My lovers and my friends stand aloof from my sore, and my kinsmen stand afar off (Ps. xxxviii. 1 1). A complaint which is wholly just, and which applies to no period more justly than to our own. It is too little for our watchmen not to watch over us; they cause us positive and great harm. For they are plunged in a deep slumber, and do not awake even at the thunders of the Divine threatening, nor are stricken with fear even for their own peril. Thence it is that, having no concern for themselves, they have no concern for those under their charge; they allow them to perish, and perish with them.

3. But who are those watchmen by whom, as the Bride declares, she was found? They are the Apostles and Apostolic men. These are they who in truth guard the city, that is, the Church in which they are found, and that with so much the greater vigilance as they see her struggling in these times against very grave perils of a domestic and internal kind, as it is written: A man's enemies are the men of his own house (Micah vii. 6). For they do not abandon her, on whose behalf they have resisted even unto blood, or leave her deprived of their help, but protect and guard her by day and night, that is, in their life and even in their death. And if precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His Saints (Ps. cxvi. 1 5), I entertain no doubt that in death they do that with so much the greater ability, as in it their dignity and authority are so greatly strengthened.

4. * You assert these things/ objects someone, ' as if you had seen them with your eyes, but they are altogether beyond the reach of human sight.' To which I reply: If you confide in the witness of your own eyes as faithful, the witness of God is greater. And He says: / have set watchmen on thy watts, O Jerusalem, which shall never hold their peace day nor night (Is. lxii, 6). But it is of the Angels, you rejoin, that this is spoken. I do not deny this; they are all ministering spirits (Heb. i. 14). But who forbids me to think the same of those who in power are not unequal to the Angels themselves, while they are perhaps as much more favourable to us by their sympathy and kindness as they are more nearly allied to us by nature? Add to this that they have endured the same sufferings and miseries in which we are now for a time involved. Will there not, then, be a profound compassion and interest for us aroused in those holy souls, since they doubtless remember that they themselves have passed through similar trials? Is not that saying theirs in the Psalms: We went through fire and through water, but Thou broughtest us out into a wealthy place (Ps. lxvi. 12). What? Will they, having passed through, leave us, their sons and their successors, in the midst of the fires and of the floods, nor even deign to stretch out a helping hand to us as we are struggling with dangers? Not so. It is well with thee, O holy Church, our Mother, it is well with thee even in this place of thy pilgrimage, for help comes to thee both from heaven and from earth. Those who keep thee neither slumber nor sleep. Thy guardians are the holy Angels; thy watchmen, the spirits and souls of the righteous. They do not mistake who think that thou art found by each of these orders of spirits, and that by each thou art equally guarded. And to each order there is a special reason for this their care of thee: to the one, that without thee they shall not be made perfect; to the other, that the fulness of their number will not be made up except from thee. For who does not know that when Satan and his accomplices fell from heaven, the number of the dwellers in heaven was diminished in no small degree? From thee, then, all these await their consummation: the one order that of their number; the other, that of their desires. Understand, then, that the words of the Psalmist apply to thee: The just wait for me until Thou reward me (Ps. cxlii. 8, Douay).

5. Notice, also, that it is not said that she has found them, but rather that they have found her; and that is, as I think, because that is the task to which they are called. For how shall they preach unless they be sent? Now, in the Gospels we read that the Lord Himself said to the Apostles: Behold^ I send you forth (Luke x. 3); and again: Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature (Mark xvi. 15). Thus it was. She sought the Bridegroom, and to Him that was not unknown; for it was He who aroused in her mind the desire to seek Him, who bestowed upon her the desire to accomplish the precepts of the law, which is for a training unto life, provided that there was someone to instruct her and to teach her the way of wisdom. And He sent before her coming those who should plant and should water, that is to say, for her instruction and strengthening in every certitude of truth, and that they should bring her certain news of her Beloved, because He whom her soul truly loves, and whom she is seeking, is the Truth. And, in fact, who is the faithful and true love of the soul but He, in and through whom the soul is made to love the truth? I am gifted with reason, I am capable of truth; but it will avail me nothing if I am destitute of love for what is true. Of all these branches, of which the root is in me, He is the fruit. I am not in safety from the severing axe if I am found without Him. It is in Him, without doubt, that I am formed in the image and likeness of God, and am in this more excellent than all other living creatures. Thence it is that my soul ventures to aspire to the sweet and pure embrace of truth, and thus to rest in the love of Him with the most complete security and perfect sweetness, if only it may find grace in the eyes of a Bridegroom so august, and be found worthy to attain to this great glory, or rather if He will present her to Himself not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing. To how great a judgment, think you, will a man render himself liable, and of how great a punishment will he be worthy, who shall show himself regardless of so precious a gift of God? But of this let us speak at another time.

6. But now the Bride does not find Him whom she sought, and she herself has been found by those whom she sought not. Let those who do not fear to enter upon the ways of life without teacher or guide listen to this. They consider themselves to be equally disciples, and their own masters, in the spiritual art. Nor is even this enough for them; blind leaders of the blind, they heap together disciples to themselves. How many have been found to have been thus most perilously drawn aside from the right path! For as they were ignorant of the snares and devices of Satan, it has followed that those who had begun in the Spirit have finished their course in the flesh, and, being led away, have fallen into shameful and inexcusable excesses. Let such take care to walk needfully; let them take an example from the Bride, who was unable to attain unto Him whom she longed for until she was met by those whose ministry she availed herself of to gain knowledge of her Beloved; that is to say, to learn the fear of the Lord. He who hesitates to give his hand to his legitimate teacher gives it to a seducer. And he who sends away his sheep to their pastures without a guardian is a shepherd, not of the sheep, but of wolves.

7. But now let us see in what sense the Bride declares herself to have been ' found.' For it seems to me that the word is employed in an unusual meaning, and that she speaks as if the Church had come only from one place; while, according to the word of the Lord, it came from the east and from the west (Matt. viii. 11), and from all the ends of the world. But neither has the Church been ever assembled unto one place where it might be found by the Apostles or by the Angels, to be directed or conducted unto Him, whom the soul of the Bride loveth. Could it have been found before it was collected? Evidently not, because it did not as yet exist Wherefore if she had said that it was collected, or congregated, or (to use a term more applicable to the Church) gathered together by the preachers [of the Gospel], I should have simply passed that over without making any remark upon it. For they are the co-workers of God, whom also they heard speaking thus: Ht that gathereth not with Me, scattereth abroad (Matt. xii. 30). Nor would it have seemed strange to me if one should say that it was founded or built up by them. For they have done this in union with Him who says, as we read in the Gospels: Upon this rock I will build My Church (Matt. xvi. 18); and, It was founded upon a rock (Matt vii. 25). But now she says none of these things, but, speaking in an unusual manner, says that she has been found, which makes us delay a little, and suspect that there is here some hidden meaning, which we ought to examine with greater care.

8. I wished, I own, to pass it over, and not to engage in an inquiry to which I feel myself not to be equal. But when I remember in how many obscure and difficult passages I have felt myself to be aided, even beyond my hope, when you lifted up your hearts in prayer on my behalf, I am ashamed of my want of faith; and blaming my fear, I undertake, though by no means with confidence, that which I timidly shrunk from. The accustomed help from the Lord will, I trust, not be wanting to me; and, in any case, the kindliness of my hearers will prevent what I have to say from being altogether without value. But with this the next sermon shall begin; for the present it is time to conclude. May He who is the Bridegroom of the Church, Jesus Christ our Lord, grant unto you not only to bear in mind the things which you have heard, but to love them ardently, and effectually to fulfil them in your actions. He is above all, God blessed for ever. Amen.